In which nothing is straightforward.

Hello hello there...Emily? Maybe? Mary-Claire for nearly-certain :D {by the way, is it capital-M capital-C? or capital-M lowercase-c?}

I digress.

WARNING - RIDICULOUS/EMBARRASSING PHOTOS TO FOLLOW - PROCEED WITH GLEE.

The last couple of days have been filled with administrative Trent things. Calendars and information on their site had proclaimed August 1 to be the Glorious Day Upon Which Graduate Students May Finally Register, and I have come to accept that I have this deep-seated need to be in control of my life (is that normal? sounds normal) so as soon as August 1 arrived I was on the site, logging in, and trying to register.

With combined excitement/mania.

Which I could not do.

Now just panic.

But..but why?!

(and each of you that thought "But why is the rum gone?!", take a shot. Of rum. Obviously.)

Turns out that Trent is rather lackadaisical {I spelled that right on the first try! BAM said the lady} about graduate registration, since courses never get over-booked or full. Well then. So a few days later, on August 3, my friend Hazel informed me that the courses were finally visible and we were able to register. So off I went again...and this time got as far as the link to the registration site, only to be told that the browser I was using (GoogleChrome, love of my life) was incompatible, and to proceed I would have to download Firefox.

Fine.

So I did, and registered for what's called the Core Course - the only required graduate course for my whole two years. I have to take three courses total over four semesters, and two are electives, so it will be great to get this required one out of the way. The main purpose of it is to write and defend a research proposal for my Master's thesis research, so I'm not predicting too much difficulty (touch wood). 

Next on my list of things to figure out was my Teaching Assistantship assignment. With my letter of offer from Trent came a promise of a TA position for the full two years of my Master's degree. However, I had no idea if we just got them assigned to us, or if we had to apply, or what. Hazel, wealth of information, said that they would eventually put a list of positions up on what's known as WebCT, and we were to approach the indicated professor for the ones we were interested in. Dandy. But when I went to log in to WebCT, I got this message:

"Sorry, but you seem to be running an unknown version of Firefox. To access WebCT, you will need to download a supported browser such as Internet Explorer."

.........

FINE!

So I did. And still couldn't get in, at least not through the myTrent portal. Having dealt with WebCT at Dalhousie though, I knew I could log in directly to Blackboard. So I did THAT and finally found the TA list, among several other very useful documents, and sent my requests. I'll let you know what I get assigned when I hear back. But I still couldn't access my Webmail, no matter which of my three browsers I used. Thankfully, after I piteously posted on the discussion board of WebCT, someone was kind enough to send me the link to directly log in to Netmail, much like I directly log in to Blackboard. 

In summary, instead of having one browser and logging in to one portal, I now have three browsers and log into three different places. 

Oh pillow. You understand.

Next on the list of crazy shenanigans was sorting out what I owe for tuition and by when it must be paid. My online account stated, scarily, that I owed around $6,000 and that $4,000 of that was due by August 15th. For someone who wasn't even able to register until August 3, that was a bit soon. So I went scouting around and found the graduate fees schedule, which stated that I owed around $3,000 and nothing was due until September 28th. Which is it, damn you?! I emailed financial services, who told me that in much the same fashion as registration, graduate accounts were on some sort of delay and nothing would be properly applied to my online account until September 10th, at which point it should reflect that I owe the latter amount by the latter date. At this point I was just sad at the level of difficulty presented in seemingly straightforward tasks.

Simplicity has abandoned this place.

But at least I pay the lesser amount by the later date. I could keep going and tell you how I went on Tuesday afternoon to drop payroll forms at the graduate office, which happens to close at noon on Tuesdays for no apparent reason. I could also tell you how I went to get my student card that day, since I had taken the 40 minute bus trip up to Trent anyway, but was told I was one day too early, as the person who encodes the access pass onto the cards was coming in the next day, and could I please come back Thursday instead. 

But this post would start to sound whiny, so lets see some happy pictures of me and my bird instead.

Bird. Bird is simple and straightforward.

Bird loves me even though I'm nuts.

Bird only asks to be blown on and whistled to.

Also some for occasional hair-chewing. <3

Ah, peaceful bird-thoughts. Oh! Speaking of birds, I was jumping rope last night in the backyard by the river and had THIS guy watching me:

Mama called him "squatchy" :D

That's a black-crowned night heron, which I've never seen before! He was still as a stone for most of my jumping, and it was dusk outside, so I wasn't sure I was seeing him right until he took off when I went closer. Very nice.

Much love to everyone reading, and I hope you don't think I'm TOO crazy.

Sarah 

P.S. almost forgot. this morning, the cat. peed. on my boots. They may never recover. Honestly. Have you ever tried to get cat-pee smell out of things? It doesn't work.

Help me.